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Bowerbirds Biography
Hymns for a Dark Horse is the first album from Raleigh, N.C., trio Bowerbirds. Indicative of the music they make, Bowerbirds were born of unequal parts conflict and sweetness.
Phil Moore and Mark Paulson had moved east from Iowa to form a band, Ticonderoga. In Raleigh, Phil met Beth Tacular--a collected and published painter. Both were weary from the recent collapse of their long term relationships but saw something special in each other. Not long before Ticonderoga disinegrated on tour somewhere in Alabama, Phil and Beth moved in together.
While taking a summer job in the swamps of South Carolina, Phil and Beth painted pictures and wrote songs and sang them. They started Bowerbirds and asked Mark to join them whenever possible.
They've toured the country once in a minivan, playing small clubs and coffee shops and street corners and camping in forests and deserts beneath the stars. They live in an Airstream trailer in the woods, and they're ecstatic.
Built on the belief that our limited earth ("In Our Talons") is as sacred as the unlimited love that we can find within it ("Human Hands"), Bowerbirds make acoustic music that feels good and aware and powerful and hopeful, offering a shelter from the apathy so rampant these days.
Phil Moore and Mark Paulson had moved east from Iowa to form a band, Ticonderoga. In Raleigh, Phil met Beth Tacular--a collected and published painter. Both were weary from the recent collapse of their long term relationships but saw something special in each other. Not long before Ticonderoga disinegrated on tour somewhere in Alabama, Phil and Beth moved in together.
While taking a summer job in the swamps of South Carolina, Phil and Beth painted pictures and wrote songs and sang them. They started Bowerbirds and asked Mark to join them whenever possible.
They've toured the country once in a minivan, playing small clubs and coffee shops and street corners and camping in forests and deserts beneath the stars. They live in an Airstream trailer in the woods, and they're ecstatic.
Built on the belief that our limited earth ("In Our Talons") is as sacred as the unlimited love that we can find within it ("Human Hands"), Bowerbirds make acoustic music that feels good and aware and powerful and hopeful, offering a shelter from the apathy so rampant these days.
Bowerbirds All Music Guide Biography
The Bowerbirds sit on the dividing line between the freak folk contingent led by Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom and the more straightforward sunshine pop of Lavender Diamond: for all the self-conscious quirkiness of their lineup and instrumentation, there's an unfeigned positivity to their music that's refreshingly direct. The roots of the Bowerbirds lie in the Raleigh, NC, indie rock trio Ticonderoga, who were led by singer and guitarist Phil Moore. During the recording of the trio's second album, 2005's The Heilig Levine LP, Moore took a job tracking birds for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, which involved living in a cabin in the Carolina woods, far from civilization. Moore's girlfriend, a visual artist named Beth Tacular (born Beth Salmon) joined him in the cabin to work on her painting; at night, Moore began writing songs influenced by the couple's rustic, natural surroundings. When Ticonderoga split up on tour supporting their second album, Moore and Tacular started their own band, the Bowerbirds, with Tacular teaching herself how to play the accordion and acquiring a marching band-style bass drum to keep rudimentary time. In this stripped-down incarnation, the Bowerbirds recorded a six-song EP, Danger at Sea, in 2006. Drafting producer and multi-instrumentalist Mark Paulson to flesh out the duo's sound, the Bowerbirds released their debut full-length, Hymns for a Dark Horse, on the new indie label Burly Time Records in 2007. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide
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